Broken
by Candylovin Fehrian
Summary: Short one shot about Alex pain...


Broken.

Something inside of him was broken beyond repair. Ripped to pieces in that moment five years ago, never to be fixed again.

He could still remember, in every painful detail, how it had felt, those moments before the shards began cutting him up from the inside.

The rope burning his hands. The frantic thumping in his chest. Yet still in one part, because of hope…

His feet numbly hitting the warm rock of the cliff. The rushing in his ears, keeping out every other sound, except his own erratic breathing.

And there was the thumping. It became louder as he neared the wreckage before him. It became so loud it was all he could hear.

Seeing the lifeless form in the car seat made the thumping jump a bit. Until his shaking hands touched the cold skin and his eyes saw the empty blue eyes of his love.

From that moment every sound stopped as something broke inside of him.

Shards.

Thousands of tiny, painfully sharp shards was what was left.

Sharp, burning bright and mean the first few weeks after the accident.

Dull and ever present throbbing after that.

And he still felt them. Oh, he had tried to fix himself. Gluing the shards together again, with Fiona. But he had fooled her, and himself. She couldn't fix him. Even he couldn't fix himself.  
There was only one person who could come close to fixing him. But she was gone.

Fiona had left him, seeing how she couldn't be who he wanted her to be…

Sometimes he would still wake up, blissfully unaware of his surroundings or past events. He would turn over, expecting to find her warm body asleep next to him. But when all he would feel was the empty cold side of his bed, the feeling of losing her all over again became all compassing.

But then he got up, ignoring the dull ache inside of him. He'd joke with Dave, work in de fields and visit his brother and Tess. They saw he still missed her, but they also saw him coping.

They didn't see the smiles never really reaching his eyes, or the slightest slump of his broad shoulders.

And then there was BOM. If he wouldn't have had her…  
She grew so fast, coming to Drovers and Killarney every weekend, and thereby making the highlights of his life. He saw so much of her mother in her. Her hair was darkening, while her eyes kept sparkling in that bright blue color.

She called him uncle Alex, and every time she said that, one of the shards would sink deeper in his flesh. She should be calling him 'Dad'… She should be calling Claire 'Mum'… But she didn't.

She had called for her Mum once. Alex had flinched when she had stuck out her chubby hand towards the grave and said it so clear. It was the first time he took her there. Heck, it was only the second time he had had the courage to go there himself.

One year… She had been gone for one year when he finally summoned up the courage to go there. And when he had entered the lot, feeling the warm breeze on his face, the pain was back full force. He had felt like the carefully constructed cage he had built around himself was being bombarded with every shard inside of him. And they were as sharp as ever. Stinging him and making him feel the pain he had tried to bury for a whole year.

He had sunken to his knees again, like he had done the day they had laid her there to rest. Only this time, there was nothing to hold on to. He was alone, there was no one to tell him everything was going to be okay. No Tess, no Charlotte, no Nick, no one. The burden was on him, like it had been from the beginning.

He knew Tess still cried. He had held her tightly after Charlotte's first birthday party. The disastrous one… But she had Nick, someone to hold her at night, when dreams would haunt her, dreams where everything would be alright, and when it hurt even more to wake up to reality. She had told him about those dreams, but he didn't have the nerve to tell her how similar they were to his…

So he had sat there. The luscious grass beneath him had grown in the year after the fresh earth had filled the hole where her body was lowered in to.

Silent tears turned into rough sobs, as the pain filled his entire being.

_No one seems to hear your hidden cries  
You're left to face yourself alone_

And that was the problem. He was alone.

Oh, there were enough people around him. But he felt like they were moving to fast, and he was the only one who moved in slow-motion.

So now, with Fiona driving off, towards a place he didn't even want to know, he held a balled fist over his heart. Massaging the ache that was making itself know again, here on this dirt road, not far away from the cliff where the rest of his heart was buried.


End file.
